Mother's Day in Kaz

Today was Day 14 of visiting, my first Mother’s Day without Sophie (missing her!), and my first one with Nicholas. Never thought I’d celebrate Mother’s Day in an orphanage. Seems like an oxymoron doesn’t it?

We had an indoor visit because it was raining and were allowed to visit downstairs, in the Directors waiting room. It was a nice change because there is a small yurt (traditional Kazakh round tent) and Russian and Kazakh dolls dressed in traditional attire that the girls were allowed to play with.
The room also has a short hallway that leads to a cavernous laundry room with industrial size washers and dryers. The pipes are on the outside of the wall and I had my first break-thru in teaching Nicholas a couple of English words without the interpreter’s help. We touched the cold pipe and I said, “cold.” He repeated something like “cole,” and when I said “hot,” he said “haw.” Good enough for me!

But officially his first English word was “football.” It came easy since it’s related to the Russian, “futbol.” ;) Hmmmm, ok, we’ll enter it in the Baby Book…first word: football.

For lunch, we went with two other couples to a traditional Kazakh restaurant. Our private room was like a Genie bottle, round, full of cushions, round table with huge, lazy susan, no shoes. Very comfy. Yes, horse was served; no, we did not eat any. I don’t need to be trying any funky type of meat—I have a hard enough time with beef. Food was quite good and champagne was really good. Much better than the Kazakh wine we poured down the drain the other night.

That was after I had spit out some cheese that tasted like it was completely soured. Katrina thought it was so funny to see Mom spit (because I’m such a lady), that she started cracking up and inadvertently inhaled her mouthful of pasta. Good thing I’m an experienced Heimlich administrator (Sophie, 2003, cheese stick). I did the Hymlich and pasta shot into the living room. Never a dull moment.

Tomorrow we turn in our request to adopt Petr Petrovich Ivanov as Nicholas Peter Holland. On Tuesday morning, we will be notified of our court date. We can leave right after court so we’re praying that will happen miraculously soon.